(EMF) — Fitawrari Amede Lema, a member of parliament during the {www:HaileSelassie} government, and renowned Ethiopian businessman who owns shopping centers, has passed away yesterday, family source in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa told EMF.
Fitawrari Amede was a member of the {www:Council of Ethiopian Elders} who mediated with the Woyanne regime the release of Kinijit (Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party) leaders in July 2007.
He was also known for the lobbying for the return of Axum Obelisk since 1966 as a member of the National Committee for the Return of the Obelisk.
The funeral will take place today at Muslim’s cemetery at 12:30 PM in Addiss Ababa.
Fitawrari Amede Lemma died at age of 90. He was a father of ten children, 34 grand children and six great grand children.
It is also reported that Wzr Sinidu Gebru, the first Ethiopian woman member of parliament and mother of Dr. Samuel Assefa (the drunkard Woyanne ambassador to USA) passed away yesterday.
I would like to pass my deepest condolences to Tilahun’s family and to Ethiopia at large. Indeed, Ethiopia has lost a true son! A legend has passed away! We should celebrate the life of this legend in unison.
Tilahun is blessed in a way that he died in his Ethiopia, the country he loved and adored all his life. May the Lord bless his soul.
Having said that, I would like to put forward a professional opinion regarding your question.
Based on what I learned from the media, my impression of Tilahun’s medical case is the following.
A 68 year old legendary artist patient with past medical history of Diabetes Mellitus (most likely type 2), heart disease, status post right leg amputation likely due to complication of his diabetes or peripheral vascular disease, and history of slitting trauma to his neck. His chronic heart disease appears to have been most likely coronary artery disease as diabetic patients tend to suffer complications affecting blood vessels. Coronary arteries (arteries supplying the heart muscle) are some of the blood vessels which get affected by complication of diabetes. Coronary artery disease can lead to heart attack, heart failure, and arrhythmia (abnormal hear rhythm including ventricular tachycardia, atrial fibrillation).
The acute medical condition that claimed the life of our icon could be heart attack, arrhythmia and or acute heart failure with pulmonary edema (filling of the lung with fluid because if his heart was not able to pump blood properly). The symptoms that I heard he told his wife include “yelibe ametat tikikil ayidelem, liben yazign”. He likely had fast or abnormal heart rhythm. I also heard that he was short of breath. Indeed, Tilahun was acutely and seriously sick and he needed urgent medical help for him to have any chance of surviving the episode.
Certainly, there was a missed window of opportunity to potentially save the life of the legend. He survived long enough to make it to Betezata clinic. Per his wife’s report, he did not seem to have received any medical help other than advice to take him to another hospital. I would not comment on the level of care provided at Betezata clinic other than saying a Basic Life Support care should be available. The physician may have thought the patient would get a better care if he was transferred quicker. The level of care provided at the clinic may be limited. The physician could have limitation in his training. Tilahun’s case would ideally require a care by a heart specialist (cardiologist). But, what could a non-cardiologist physician have done to help him?
Given the limitations of the health care in Ethiopia, I would use the example of what a non cardiologist physician in the US could have done to help Tilahun. At least the following could have been done.
1) Check his vital signs (heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate, and his oxygen)
2) Perform a quick and focused history and physical exam.
3) Give him oxygen supplement
4) Give him aspirin, nitroglycerin
5) Check EKG
6) Secure iv access
7) Draw blood samples for laboratory tests.
8) If Tilahun was noted to have no pulse or recordable blood pressure, he could have been given IV fluid. If he had abnormal heart rhythm he would have been given medications to slow the heart rate or electric shock could be given as necessary.
These measures could have stabilized the patient until he gets specialized care. Also, Tilahun would have been transported by an ambulance which would be faster and would be able to provide Basic Life Support (BLS) or possibly Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS).
I will leave the judgment to the reader if the above could have been done at Betezata clinic given the rudimentary nature of the health system in Ethiopia.
I think it is wise and appropriate for Elias Kifle and all concerned Ethiopians to ask if Tilahun’s death could have been prevented. I do not think the government is directly involved in Tilahun’s death. That being said, who is responsible for the precarious health care system in Ethiopia? Who is responsible for the quality of physician training? Who is responsible for the absence of such a basic life support care in clinics in the nation’s capital? Who is responsible for the inaccessibility of health care to the people? Definitely, the government is responsible for the poor health system and its untoward effect. In fact, we may be suffering from the effect of an ill conceived health policy. Prime Minister Meles once said Ethiopia does not need doctors, remember? If he has this feeling towards doctors, do you think he would care for the quality of their training?
The big question is, if Tilahun, as legendary as he is, dies wandering to get to a hospital in Addis Ababa, can you imagine what is happening to the poor millions like Aba Biya in the village of Serbo in Oromia?
Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has received a warm welcome on his arrival in neighboring Ethiopia for a two-day state visit. VOA’s Peter Heinlein in Addis Ababa reports Ethiopian and other African officials greeted Mr. Bashir with full honors, while most western diplomats are boycotting the event.
Reporters were kept away from airport ceremonies where Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi welcomed Mr. Bashir for a meeting of the Ethiopia-Sudan High Level Joint Commission.
Sudan and Ethiopia share a 3,000 kilometer long border, and the two delegations are discussing a variety of political, security and economic issues.
An unofficial count showed about 20 of the more than 50 African ambassadors in Addis Ababa showed up for the welcome ceremonies, along with envoys from China, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela. But the United States, the European Union and most other countries boycotted the event. The boycott extends to a lavish state dinner hosted by Ethiopia’s president… [read more]
It is Monday morning after Ethiopian Easter Sunday. I was driving to work in a juicy Washington spring weather. It was raining heavily and I was in a crowded traffic when the ring tone of my cellular phone, a Teddyi Afro’s song that I have set up to use until he gets out of prison, was playing off the hook. One call was from my daughter. “Hi Fekadye it is a sad day in Ethiopia today, have you heard that {www:Tilahun Gesesse} passed away? It is sad. I know you will cry but cry not too much ok” and she hung up. Then a friend and then another confirmed the sad new to me. It was a surreal feeling. Alone, in a far away land on a highway; not an ideal place to hear stunning news of the death of a man that I love, admire and consider my country’s treasure and icon. These are some of the times where you hate “sidet”, a time you hate to live away from the people you want to be in the middle of, and share pain and grief together.
Tilahun has many times made me uncontrollably emotional while listening to his songs and watch him sing. I never imagined he would lead me to uncontrollable tears at the news of his passing away too. I parked on a shoulder and cried profusely. It was a good time and place to cry. Everyone was rushing to work and no one was looking, but who the damn cares even if anybody looks at you. They are passerby and I was crying for something larger than whatever a ferenji passerby may be thinking I was crying about. I felt like I was crying not for Tilahun alone but for an entire era that he takes away with him. From where I was, I saw my country coiling in sadness, so sad as if she doesn’t have enough of sadness already. I even imagined that the mountains of Ethiopia that echoed Tilahun’s songs through the flutes of sheep and goat herders were silent in sadness.
Five full decades of failure to replace one super star, I often joked, is a sign of the slow sociocultural dynamism in Ethiopia. I am probably wrong on this one. Tilahun was simply unsurpassable.
There was everything from Tilahun’s beautiful voices for all times and generations of Ethiopians. His gift straddles the generations of my daughter, me and my father and probably beyond. There was also everything for every humanly feeling in those voices. Just tell me what you need and I will pick a song for you from Tilahun. Whether you are sad, you are in love, happy, or raved up by patriotism, there was something for you in the voices of Tilahun. He was, after all, the soundtrack of all our lives for so many years. It is hard to stop traveling in memory lane back in our lives and remember songs like “engudaye neshi”, “Yegeter Temir nesh” and who would forget that 1974 song “waay Waay silu” about the famine victims which he sang along with a river of tears flooding his face. That was something that tells you that Tilahun not only had a wonderful voice but also a wonderful heart too.
As a member of the generation raised by his songs I have tons of memories of Tilahun. I have not yet had grasped the fact that he died. I know he is mortal, but I looked like a little foolish to think that he will never die. But then again, I may probably am half right. Tilahun may never die. He is going to be physically absent no doubt. But he will continue to live in our households. I have the treasures he left in my library.
There is some lesson for all of us in the life of this great legend. Any one of us making significant contributions to positively affect the lives of our people and country and still die physically can continue to live as Tilahun definitely will. People who do something greater than themselves live forever. Work for our people, fight for their freedom and change their lives. You will live long after you died. That is the moral of Tilahun’s life and story. I am still crying but some half of me tells me the right thing to do now is to celebrate Tilahun’s wonderful life and gift to all of us.
Goodbye Tilahun! Thank you for the wonderful gift you left us behind! It has been such a long time of hard work. Now take a break from singing and rest in peace! Goodbye my dear! Goodbye!!
An interview with Tilahun Gessesse’s wife Wzr. Roman Bezu indicates that his life could have been spared on Sunday had he received timely medical care in Addis Ababa.
{www:Tilahun Gessesse} arrived in Ethiopia from the U.S., where he was receiving treatment, on Sunday, April 19, to celebrate Fasika, the Easter Holiday.
Wzr. Roman said that on Sunday evening when Tilahun started to complain about shortness of breath, she put him in a car and headed for Bete-Zata Clinic to get him an emergency treatment.
Bete-Zata could not even give Tilahun oxygen as he cried out that he could not breath. The doctor on duty told Wzr. Roman that he is not a heart specialist and suggested another clinic. What kind of medical doctor doesn’t know about stabilizing a patient until a specialist arrives?
Wzr. Roman accepted the Bete-Zata doctor’s suggestion and headed to the other clinic without making sure how to get there — and she got lost. By the time she found the clinic, Tilahun was too weak, unable to breath.
Click here [pdf] to read the interview with Roman Bezu.
Tilahun’s inability to get emergency medical treatment in a timely manner exemplifies the extremely poor state of health care in Ethiopia under the {www:Woyanne} tribal junta regime. After all, it is the same regime that murdered the country’s world renowned surgeon Professor Asrat Woldeyes by depriving him of medical treatment.
While mourning Tilahun’s untimely death, let’s also remember the countless other Ethiopians who are dying every day for lack of the most basic health care in Ethiopia, as the parasite regime spends hundreds of millions of dollars to buy weapons that are used to brutalize the people of Ethiopia and Horn of Africa.
The shameless Woyanne regime officials may decide to attend Tilahun’s funeral ceremony Wednesday for their own political reasons. Tilahun’s friends and fans need to use the occasion to demand the release of Teddy Afro, another Ethiopian music icon who has been thrown in a filthy prison cell for singing about justice, peace and unity.
(EMF) — Fitawrari Amede Lema, a member of parliament during the {www:HaileSelassie} government, and renowned Ethiopian businessman who owns shopping centers, has passed away yesterday, family source in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa told EMF.
It is Monday morning after Ethiopian Easter Sunday. I was driving to work in a juicy Washington spring weather. It was raining heavily and I was in a crowded traffic when the ring tone of my cellular phone, a 